Obama Tee

Sabine holding up our freshly screened Obama t-shirts by Grow Your Own Media from last night's Eagle Rock Music Festival.

Breakdance ER style!

Kids seriously busting out some moves at last night's Eagle Rock Music Festival!The splits, go girl!

Pose my little ten year old brotha!

And what's it called when the boys and girls challenge and outdo each other's moves, back an forth?? anyway...

Go ki-i-ids! Go ki-i-ids!

Let's Be Frank

Let's Be Frank - the best and best looking hot dog truck in town serving grass fed beef and family farmed pork!

Native Garden - Lili Singer

Last night, I attended a lecture at the Pasadena Public Library about native gardens by Lili Singer of the Theodore Payne Foundation. I truly have a black thumb so reading a book about plants just won't do for me. This lecture was perfect. Here are some things I jotted down...

• In California, a native plant is one that grew without human intervention before the Europeans came.
• We have 2 springs in Southern Cal - one in the spring and one in the fall. Most native plants are dormant in the summer, then with the moisture in the fall, come back to life again.
• LA County has a Medditeranean climate - similar climates include Southern tip of South Africa, southwest Australia, west facing Chile, North Africa, and the Medditeranean part of Europe so plants native of these regions can work for us here as well.
• Xeriscape = dry landscape. This was the trend during the drought in the late 1980's-90's
• Lawns provide no habitat for insects and animals and don't do much for the environment - they are great for kids, but kids can also be taken to the park, parks will then become more popular preventing the rif raf that hang out. They had a Kill Your Lawn Workshop!
• A healthy garden has a lot of anthropods (bugs!) Lady bugs will, for example, eat afids. Just gotta let nature do its thing. It will take care of itself. Also, if you don't have insects, you don't have birds - the food chain.
• Best to just keep leaves on the ground to create a natural mulch.
• Regarding the recent fires, the bottom line is to keep your your foilage moderated, not overgrown.
• How to plan your native garden: access your site, soil type, sunlight exposure, wind, overall climate, the microclimates.
• Group plants that have similar needs for water, sunlight, etc.
• Soil ammendments are not encouraged because the plant sort of becomes spoiled and then will overgrow too fast and potentially have a shorter lifespan. "Better to grow your plants hard."
• For erosion needs, natives are best!

I couldn't stay for the whole lecture, but I was impressed by the attendance and Lili Singer's following. Will try to make it to the Theodore Payne's annual Fall Festival Oct. 3-4 and Oct 10-11 where everything is at least 10% off.

pic: the plants I've managed to keep alive - these plants give me hope that I can make a native garden work!

Nose to Tail

Is it okay to eat meat (on occasion) if the animal has had a good life? This is my current dilemma. There are times when I just need a little bit of those beef ribs on my husband's plate, but only if I know that it came from a grass fed cow.

In this morning's NY Times, chefs are taking it a step further by "taking on the whole cow." Cow and pig in these Brooklyn restaurants are already grass fed and raised humanely, but they remove yet another step in "processing" by ordering entire carcasses and carving out the parts themselves, in their own kitchens, to be shared amongst their restaurants. This means coordinating who will get what parts each week and being creative when you do get the head, the feet, or the knuckles.

To drive home the point, he has taken his staff to witness animal slaughters. After that, he said: “I don’t have mistakes anymore. They don’t burn meat. They don’t miscount. There are no screw-ups." Heck yeah, that would set me straight too!

Good article and one that makes me feel like I can have an bite of a hamburger when it's done right.

(image: from the NY Times)

sparkle at sea

mid-afternoon sparkle at sea.

chocolate bread and butter pudding

Can you tell we just hated :) the chocolate bread and butter pudding (bread pudding, which was like creme brule/flan, filled with real chocolate, and finished with sugary carmelized top and slices of bread) from Hungry Cat. Wow.

Kyle Field

Kyle Field at Taylor de Cordoba.

The Bike

I finally got on the bike and ran errands today. Returned some library books (what a nerd), got a carrot juice to ward off sickness from the change in weather, sat at the coffee shop to do a little work, and even stopped by the farmers market to find some eggplant for dinner. This might sound like a typical senario for some, but for me - HUGE.

Admittedly, I'm not an athlete... which can explain why this new bike and cute basket have been sitting in the garage for the whole summer. Another reason might be all the damn hills here in ER! But something possessed me to set up the basket, figure out my lock, load up my backpack and basket with books, and just take off. Maybe it was to keep my green momentum going?

So not only did I get things done, save gas and emissions, I got a 30 minute workout in too.

Now home, I am enjoying the reward of a fan blowing on full speed and a cold glass of water. Next on my list - composting.... yikes!

Baby Greetings

Greetings for my friend's new baby. Album cover from the Pixies. Love.

things...

from ATLA today :). Quote by Art Buchwald.

tree with long stems

Looking for a tree to plant for shade in the front of the house. Saw these at the park. I love the long slender stems, but don't know what the tree is called...

Construct at LACMA

Took my nephew to Construct at LACMA the other day. Nothing better than instilling the idea of a great big space where all you make is art!

R-23

Strolled into R-23 for dinner the other night. Not only was the food really good (Japanese), I wanted the cardboard seating. Went perfectly with the concept of hard to find places, very Martin Margiela in Paris.

Oyster Mushrooms

I got some prime picks of the oyster mushrooms this morning at farmers market! Had a bunch this morning with scrambled eggs, chives, and parsley.

Trying to learn about the medicinal qualities of certain foods. Here's what I read at www.fungusamongus.com

"Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus Ostreatus) is a fleshy, gilled mushroom growing in shelf-like fashion on wood that is a good food and promising medicinal. Protein quality is nearly equal to animal derived protein. Low fat content is mostly of the good unsaturated kind. Also contained are carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins B1, B2, plus minerals, especially iron and an antioxident. This mushroom shows activity against cancer and high cholesterol. It has shown activity in the following areas: antitumor, immune response, anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antibiotic."

Staycation: Norton Simon

Last Friday night we stopped by the Norton Simon Museum before going out to dinner. I've been thinking about our version of a stay-cation and am finding that there is still so much to explore in the 5 mile radius of which we live. It was a neat feeling to realize that we lived just a mile or so away from world reknown artwork like Cezanne's "Tulips in a Vase", Van Gogh's "Portrait of a Peasant", and dozens of bronzed ballerina sculptures and paintings by Edgar Degas just to name a few. I loved the dramatic lighting of this piece (not sure who artist is, but they have one at the Getty too!) in the sculpture garden. Those are Heath Ceramics tiles on the building. Since it was the first Friday of the month, admission was free.

parachute rush

What a rush - being thrown up in a parachute! No one, especially these two, ever wants it to end.

baby tomatoes

I love the look of baby tomatoes when they are sliced in half. They have wonderful symmetry that I only notice in salad I had in Spain. Whoever prepared the salad sliced one of these tomatoes in half to reveal a little explosion of stem and seeds. These are red, orange and yellow tomatoes ready to be added to a big salad for my aunt's 60th birthday.

New Toilet

Earlier this year, I did the dye test on the toilet in out small guest bathroom. I found evidence that there was a slow leak - dye color from the tank leaked slowly seeped into the bowl. When the plumber was here for another project, we tried to see if he could seal it, but it was leak that you couldn't see. Small leaks can potentially yield gallons and gallons of wasted water according to Sustainable Works. After much research on other ways to fix, we eventually decided that the only way was to replace it.

words: Moral Ambiguity

Moral ambiguity in the case of trial law, is having to defend a client you know is guilty.

Going Veggie

I've been eating vegetarian as of late. It's not bad at all. There is so much good meatless food! And its especially easy in L.A. Today we had an all-you-can-eat lunch at the Tibet Nepal House for $8.99. It was delicious.

The reason for going veggie - I've been reading about animal cruelty on farms, hormones given to animals to make them beefier, and the fact that meat molecules more readily attract cancer cells.

I successfully ate vegetarian for one month straight. That was my first test. I am back to eating some meat, very little though, am completely off beef, and weening off pork and chicken (having a hard time not eating small amounts at family parties). Not sure yet if I'll give up fish entirely. I know that diet makes a big difference in health - obvious in my skin, allergies I used to have, my regularity, and in my weight.

Also had the idea that during my senior years, I would be vegetarian to keep from taking all the crazy medication my older relatives take.

Library Cards

I just recently re-discovered public libraries. I am doing research on recycled PET, the polyester fabric made from recycled plastic bottles, and am amazed at how easy and convenient it was to find what I needed. I've gone to the library to donate books, but it's probably been over 10 years since I've actually checked anything out.

Los Angeles Central Library has their most of their catalog online, so you can see what books they have by topic, and see if it is available or checked out. If it's not in the building, you can see it's route throughout the other branch libraries. Amazing. Public libraries are way more caught up than other public services.

In any case, this privilege has been curbing my book buying habits and even better, my magazine buying habits. A lot of new books are re-packaged version of the old thing, but I can't deny that new ones are updated and more aesthetically pleasing.

The other great part -- reading in a mostly quiet, air conditioned place!!

Ilse Crawford Lamp

I just LOVE this lamp by Ilse Crawford. It has such character about it...

Al Gore

From Al Gore's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture for his efforts to raise awareness of the global climate crisis --

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking? Why didn't you act?"

Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose, we will rise and act."

Getty Museum

I always think of the Getty Museum as a little utopia - everything is manicured, you walk on immaculate white marble floors, see kids rolling down the hill on perfect grass, stand beside buildings that dwarf the common man, and are transported via the space tram. Often, these surroundings easily trump the art. We visited, looking for cooler temperatures this Labor Day weekend.